


In the Alpha Kindergarten

by ErrantNight



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Loneliness, One Shot, Sad with a Happy Ending, Short One Shot, alpha kindergarten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 19:42:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19116424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErrantNight/pseuds/ErrantNight
Summary: One-shot. I wondered what happened when Amethyst came out of her hole all alone and what she did all that time. It didn't turn out happy, sorry.





	In the Alpha Kindergarten

It wasn’t so much a ‘pop’ as a rumbling sound of crumbling stone as Amethyst came out of the hole she’d grown in and stretched out her lightform for the first time. She was number… what? Which? She wasn’t sure. She took a few steps, looking up and up at the multitude of empty slots where all the other Amethysts had already come out… she looked around, confused and not a little concerned when she saw that there was absolutely nobody around. 

There was an injector bedded into the ground near the warp pad, but she didn’t know where that went - should she try it? Probably not, she just… didn’t know where it went. She looked up again, at the serpentine sliver of black sky and stars and one bright half full moon illuminated the parts of the ground and walls it could reach. 

She sat down on a nearby protrusion of rock, broken off from the top of the cliffs and crashed down into a boulder surrounded by smaller rocks and mounds of dust. Amethyst supposed she should wait there, for someone to come get her. The sun rose, she fidgeted. For hours. Her fingers tapped a rhythm against her knee, she picked up little rocks and juggled them between her hands, threw them down the path and tried to listen for anyone coming. 

Sitting got boring after awhile, she was aware from the moment she’d emerged that there were supposed to be others here. That an Amethyst got bored easy with no orders - nothing to do - no one to fight. Pacing was marginally more interesting and eventually restless humming as she walked. She paced in a rough circle near her hole for awhile, then her eye caught on something she hadn’t noticed before in all the planetary spins she’d been waiting for.

The other holes, neatly stacked from bottom to top along both sides of the cliffs, were so much bigger than hers. She lifted one arm up, unable to reach the very top even with the tips of her fingers. It wasn’t as deep as hers either, the back of it completely smooth instead of rounded like her own. 

What did that mean? She could see that every other hole was identical, and she checked a few dozen of them with curiosity. 

After a while, a long while, she got up the nerve to move further away from where she thought she was supposed to wait. If no one was going to come get her, she’d go see if there was anything at one of the other ends of the kindergarten. She walked from her little hole, all the way to one end. She stood on the edge of the dry and cracked ground of the kindergarten, finding everything that stretched out from there was green. It was almost the same green as a Peridot. The sky she’d only seen as a sliver that followed the twists and turns of the cliffs was enormous - it stretched out to infinity. So did the green stuff, in rolling hills going gently up seemingly forever until it met some kind of fluffy looking darker green, like a Malachite. 

She knelt down, inching closer to the green threads sticking up out of the ground and waving with the breeze. It was rougher than it looked, each sliver of it rough edged and flat, wider at the bottom and tapering to a point at the top. She pulled some of it up, bits of brown dirt clinging to little white threads at the bottom. She poked at it, getting more dirt on her fingers. She wiped them on the grass, flicking her fingers to get the rest of it off.

Her knees never left the kindergarten, so she couldn’t get in trouble for wandering off whenever she was fetched off to wherever they were all supposed to be.

She turned back and went the other way and by the time she reached the other end it was dark. It opened up to basically the same thing but it was interesting all over again because the bluish white light of the moon made everything different. The sky overhead was dark, the moonlight slowly being encroached by dark clouds and the stars completely invisible. 

A streak of bright white light illuminated everything for a few seconds, the fluffy green things sticking out of the waving rough strands of lighter green things was all bluish green instead of dark green. And on this end it sloped down instead of up.

The wind picked up, flickers of light pulsing in the clouds. She watched it, fascinated by anything new. But after a few hours, and water beginning to pelt down hard enough to make the dry dust of the kindergarten begin to turn slushy and squishy. Then it started accumulating, then it started rising. 

Amethyst jumped up to the highest Amethyst-hole she could reach. The water washed down through the center of the kindergarten, from this end and toward the other. 

This happened several dozen times, as she waited. And waited. Sometimes interesting things happened at one end or the other, things running or bouncing on the green stuff or flying in the sky, but Amethyst was always drawn back to the rock she usually sat on just outside her hole.

She wasn’t sure how long it took for her to realize that no one was coming, but by then she was afraid to try and go off anywhere else. The warp pad sat there, dark and silent, tempting. She knew how it worked - the same way she knew how to walk and talk and know she was an Amethyst and that something wasn’t right and she shouldn’t be alone.

When it finally lit up she ran and hid. She knew it was stupid, she’d been waiting for this for so long she didn’t even know how long…

They caught her though, the Pearl and the… she wasn’t sure what the other two were until they told her. A Garnet and a Rose Quartz. She didn't even care what or who they were. It was enough that she knew, for the first time, what it was like to not be alone.


End file.
